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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWikileaks Release Suggests Stratfor Inside Info Plan with Goldman Sachs Exec
Here's what really bugs the Powerful: when the Little People discover how the Powerful use their office and privilege for personal benefit, including lying American into wars without end for profits without cease. Hence, their hatred for Wikileaks and journalists.
Wikileaks Release Suggests Stratfor Inside Info Plan with Goldman Sachs Exec
By Ryan Villarreal: Subscribe to Ryan's RSS feed
IBTimes.com
February 27, 2012 6:26 PM EST
WikiLeaks released more than 5 million e-mails Monday hacked from U.S.-based global intelligence firm Strategy Forecasting Inc. (Stratfor), revealing an alleged plan between the firm's CEO and a Goldman Sachs executive to set up an investment fund that would rely on inside information gathered by the company.
A September 2011 company-wide e-mail composed by Stratfor CEO George Friedman indicates that Goldman Sachs financial adviser and former Managing Director Shea Morenz was directly involved in the establishment of the investment fund StratCap.
"Shea Morenz provided us with two opportunities," wrote Friedman.
"First, he made an investment in Stratfor designed to give us the capital needed to build our staff and our marketing. Second, he proposed a new venture, StratCap, which would allow us to utilize the intelligence we were gathering about the world in a new but related venue -- an investment fund. Where we had previously advised other hedge funds. We would now have our own, itself fully funded by Shea."
CONTINUED...
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/305532/20120227/wikileaks-stratfor-stratcap-goldman-sachs-fund-julian.htm
These so-and-sos would get away with all this, were it not for a few brave souls.
WikiLeaks' Stratfor Dump Lifts Lid on Intelligence-Industrial Complex
WikiLeaks' latest release, of hacked emails from Stratfor, shines light on the murky world of private intelligence-gathering
by Pratap Chatterjee
Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
What price bad intelligence? Some 5m internal emails from Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based company that brands itself as a "global intelligence" provider, were recently obtained by Anonymous, the hacker collective, and are being released in batches by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, starting Monday.
The most striking revelation from the latest disclosure is not simply the military-industrial complex that conspires to spy on citizens, activists and trouble-causers, but the extremely low quality of the information available to the highest bidder. Clients of the company include Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, as well as US government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Marines.
SNIP...
Assange notes that Stratfor is also seeking to profit directly from this information by partnering in an apparent hedge-fund venture with Shea Morenz, a former Goldman Sachs managing director. He points to an August 2011 document, marked "DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS", from Stratfor CEO George Friedman, which says:
"What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor's intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like."
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/28-10?print
How much more real can it get than members of the secret team using inside information for personal gain?
WikiLeaks Goes Inside Corporate America's Wannabe CIA
What do Coke, Goldman, the Marines, and the Knights of Columbus have in common? They all paid Stratfor to act as their own private intelligence agency.
By Adam Weinstein | Mother Jones, Mon Feb. 27, 2012 1:42 PM PST
EXCERPT...
Few companies seemed as concerned about threats from activists as Archer Daniels Midland, the "Goliath of world food production" Mother Jones once described as equally concerned with "possible price-fixing in Bulgaria" and "influence-peddling in Washington." Shortly after Stratfor started its Global Vantage service, Rich Ryan of ADM's "investigative unit" began to hit them up for intel on political enemies:
On July 24, 2006: "Rich called to ask a few more questions about activist campaigns to pass to other business divisions. Watching for more information."
Two days later: "Talked with Rich several times about activist campaign against the company."
On November 9, 2006: "Received email from Rich regarding some animal rights protesters. Setting up a meeting while he and Mark are in DC next week."
Five days later: "Rich came into the office for a brief discussion about animal rights as it relates to their new facilty in Decatur. He seems very happy with the service, and happy with our information and assistance."
CONTINUED...
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/wikileaks-strafor-leak-corporate-intelligence
How about OWNING the system whereby the government gathers "intelligence"?
Behind the Curtain: Booz Allen Hamilton and its Owner, The Carlyle Group
Written by Bob Adelmann
The New American; June 13, 2013
According to writers Thomas Heath and Marjorie Censer at the Washington Post, The Carlyle Group and its errant child, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), have a public relations problem, thanks to NSA leaker and former BAH employee Edward Snowden. By the time top management at BAH learned that one of their top level agents had gone rogue, and terminated his employment, it was too late.
For years Carlyle had, according to the Post, nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries; but now the light from the Snowden revelations has revealed nothing more than two companies, parent and child, bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits.
And have they ever. When The Carlyle Group bought BAH back in 2008, it was totally dependent upon government contracts in the fields of information technology (IT) and systems engineering for its bread and butter. But there wasn't much butter: After two years the companys gross revenues were $5.1 billion but net profits were a minuscule $25 million, close to a rounding error on the companys financial statement. In 2012, however, BAH grossed $5.8 billion and showed earnings of $219 million, nearly a nine-fold increase in net revenues and a nice gain in value for Carlyle.
Unwittingly, the Post authors exposed the real reason for the jump in profitability: close ties and interconnected relationships between top people at Carlyle and BAH, and the agencies with which they are working. The authors quoted George Price, an equity analyst at BB&T Capital: " got a great brand, they've focused over time on hiring top people, including bringing on people who have a lot of senior government experience." (Emphasis added.)
For instance, James Clapper had a stint at BAH before becoming the current Director of National Intelligence; George Little consulted with BAH before taking a position at the Central Intelligence Agency; John McConnell, now vice chairman at BAH, was director of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the 90s before moving up to director of national intelligence in 2007; Todd Park began his career with BAH and now serves as the country's chief technology officer; James Woolsey, currently a senior vice president at BAH, served in the past as director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and so on.
BAH has had more than a little problem with self-dealing and conflicts of interest over the years. For instance in 2006 the European Commission asked the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Privacy International (PI) to investigate BAHs involvement with President George Bushs SWIFT surveillance program, which was viewed by that administration as just another tool in its so-called War on Terror. The only problem is that it was illegal, as it violated U.S., Belgian, and European privacy laws. BAH was right in the middle of it. According to the ACLU/PI report,
Though Booz Allens role is to verify that the access to the SWIFT data is not abused, its relationship with the U.S. Government calls its objectivity significantly into question. (Emphasis added.)
Among Booz Allens senior consulting staff are several former members of the intelligence community, including a former Director of the CIA and a former director of the NSA.
As noted by Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU director, Its bad enough that the administration is trying to hold out a private company as a substitute for genuine checks and balances on its surveillance activities. But of all companies to perform audits on a secret surveillance program, it would be difficult to find one less objective and more intertwined with the U.S. government security establishment. (Emphasis added.)
CONTINUED w Links n Privatized INTEL...
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15696-behind-the-curtain-booz-allen-hamilton-and-its-owner-the-carlyle-group
Wikileaks and the associated leakers and journalists brave enough to "go there" are proof-positive that "money trumps peace" for government insiders and their rich cronies and political sponsors. It's no wonder so much is classified Top Secret.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)By RAPHAEL SATTER and CASSANDRA VINOGRAD
AP/HuffPost 02/27/2012 1:40 pm EST
LONDON Private intelligence firm Stratfor is in the business of shedding light on the world for its many clients. On Monday, anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks was the one shedding light on Stratfor, saying it had more than 5 million of the company's emails and would publish them in collaboration with two dozen international media organizations.
SNIP...
"What we have discovered is a company that is a private intelligence Enron," Assange told London's Frontline Club, referring to the Texas energy giant whose spectacular bankruptcy turned it into a byword for corporate malfeasance.
Assange accused Stratfor of funneling money to informants through offshore tax havens, monitoring activist groups on behalf of big corporations and making investments based on its secret intelligence.
SNIP...
"When people discover, 'Hey, here's your clients,' then your clients are chilled," said Jeffrey Addicott, the director for the Center of Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas. "It causes a certain uproar."
Some clients are already facing questions. Among the emails are reports apparently compiled for The Dow Chemical Co. on activists who have targeted the company over its links to the Bhopal gas leak disaster, which killed thousands of Indians and spawned a long-running legal battle.
Dow said in a written statement that "major companies are often required to take appropriate action to protect their people and safeguard their facilities," adding that it operated within the law.
The reports prepared for Dow appeared to be little more than roundups of news stories and Internet chatter, but Stratfor also boasts of more serious sources.
One leaked email quotes Stratfor Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton bragging about his "trusted former CIA cronies." In another, he promises to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation.
CONTINUED...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/stratfor-emails-wikileaks_n_1304501.html
PS: You are most welcome, Jackpine Radical. Thank you for the kind words. I don't mind government secrets. I do mind secret government. WikiLeaks exposed some of their secret agenda and it shows they're using their secret power for private gain.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)By Rachel Marsden
March 1, 2012
As promised in December, WikiLeaks has begun to release a stash of documents related to the modus operandi of the "private intelligence" sector, using Texas-based Stratfor as a case study. Claiming to have hacked Stratfor's system to obtain millions of private emails, WikiLeaks has just released the first batch -- and what it suggests about the American intelligence community makes me feel as secure as day-old pizza in a frat house.
SNIP...
Apparently the entities charged with keeping us safe now require full-blown lessons from the private sector in how to do their jobs. According to leaked email written by Stratfor's CEO, George Friedman: "We have also been asked to help the United States Marine Corps and other government intelligence organizations to teach them how Stratfor does what it does, and train them in becoming government Stratfors. We are beginning this project by preparing a three-year forecast for the Commandant of the Corps. This is a double honor for us."
Double honor for you; double horror for us! The fact that the commandant of the Marine Corps "and other government intelligence organizations" might require your expertise in learning how to do what they've historically been entrusted by the public to do does nothing for my sense of security.
Do you know how a lot of these outfits in the thriving private intelligence sector operate? The company CEO, usually a former agency employee who has maintained UMBRA or "Top Secret" clearance, meets with a private or state client to pitch his outfit's services, then passes off the analysis work to some book-smart/sidewalk-stupid naif who has just been dragged kicking and screaming into the real-world workforce after frittering away a good decade or so ringing up a party tour of Ivy League schools on mommy and daddy's AmEx black card. Kids work cheap -- especially trust-funders. With few exceptions, that's who's really doing the work in protecting America's interests.
CONTINUED...
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-new-wikileaks-stash-a-frightening-view-of-government-intelligence-20120229,0,68318.story
So. Who gets to take advantage of all this "secret inside information"? It seems the "Who Benefits?" part is kept secret, too.
Thanks for grokking, elias49!
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)It's a fictionalized history of the CIA. Matt Damon's character, Edward Wilson - a confabulation or analgam of James Jesus Angleton and Ted Shackley careers as snipped from the public record, pays a visit to Joseph Palmi, a Mafia liaison to the Castro Assassination program, played by Joe Pesci. Before talking business, the small talk...
Joseph Palmi: "We Italians, we've got our families and the Church. What do your people have, Mr. Wilson?"
Edward Wilson: "We've got the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting."
And that little scene spelled out precisely the primal importance the "money trumps peace" crowd places on private property and its bearing on our current, austere, situation. They don't give humanity and all the death and collateral damage they cause a passing thought. And the rich getting richer, from their POV, isn't a problem.
Very much glad you grok the situation is major, 99th_Monkey!
2naSalit
(86,646 posts)As usual, I find many of your posts to e very informative... even though what I read in them makes me feel ill... because what I read confirms what I was suspecting all along.
As I was reading this and a few posts in DU recently along with what I saw in the few seconds of the Senate activity last night, I came to the conclusion that not only do we "little people" - a phrase coined by Denny Hastert - need to stop making purchases, we also need to invent - it seems - a new language or code to keep these oligarchs from being able to interpret so that when they do spy on us, they can't figure out what we're saying. And/or create a new system of communication so we can all be connected outside of the corporate network.
Don't know how to do that but it's becoming evident, to me at least, that such measures will become necessary and soon.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)It's almost an ENIGMA, what the rich and powerful say. It's to hide what they do.
Case in point: One Neil Mallon Pierce Bush, son of then-president George Herbert Walker Bush and caught with his hand in a billion-dollar S&L cookie jar called Silverado Savings & Loan. Here's what Poppy did for his Number 3 Son:
How the Elite Talk in Code
EXCERPT...
A perfect example of code talk comes from a true master insider, George H.W. Bush, when his son, Neil, was caught red handed in the middle of the S&L crisis as a director of Sliverado Bank.
Did Bush lay out his cards and call in his operatives and say pull some strings, get my son out of this investigation (Remember Bush was president at the time.) No. Bush is too smooth. In his published collection of letters, All The Best, George Bush, he shows us how the heat is delicately taken off Neil. On page 449, there is this letter to Thomas Ludlow Ashley.
Ashley is a Yale University grad, and member of the secret society Skull and Bones along with Bush. Here's the letter:
The Honorable Thomas Ludlow Ashley
Association of Bank Holding Companies
Washington, D.C. 20005
Dear Lud,
Thank you for your good memo December 8th.
I would appreciate any help you can give Neil. He tells me he never had any insider dealings. He got off the Board early--long before I was elected President. The Denver paper apparently ran a very nice editorial about him on that. He is an outside director, and thus I guess has liability, but I can't believe his name would appear in the paper if it was Jones not Bush. In any event, I know that the guy is totally honest. I saw him in Denver and I think he is worried about the publicity and the "shame". I tell him not to worry about that but any advice you can give as this matter unfolds would be greatly appreciated by me. If it turns out there has been some marginal call, or he has done something wrong, needless to say there will be no intervention from his dad. But, I'm quite confident this is not true...
Warm regards,
George
Notice how smooth. No talk about getting Ashley anything for taking care of the matter. The nice touch about if Neil "has done something wrong", but the clear finish, he didn't.
CONTINUED...
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/how-elite-talk-in-code.html
When it comes to money and power, it really is a small world. We'd hear it more often, if only we were privy to the conversation.
I just got back from seeing "The Imitation Game." It's a bio-pic of Alan Turing and how he led the team that cracked the ENIGMA code used by the NAZIs. First-rate film, in every way, great story, acting, history, back stories, yada the whole yada. Turing had a hard time when confronted with lies. And that's the only way the spymasters could stay ahead of the codebreaker.
The public discovering the kinds of treason and corruptions these characters are perpetrating frightens the crooks like nothing else. Thanks for grokking, 2naSalit: That's what I recommend for us and all DU -- just the Truth.
2naSalit
(86,646 posts)a time (just months prior to the exposure of the Silverado thing) when an acquaintance tried to talk my spouse and I into getting involved in a scheme that turned out to be directly involved in the debacle. We were looking for funding for our business, totally unrelated to real estate. This acquaintance, an old school chum of my spouse's, was trying to steer us into some sideways deal involving skyscrapers in Houston. Odd since we were in Chicago at the time,,, but they referred us to some connections "downtown" to see if we could get in on the deal which would, allegedly, help us gain funds for our unrelated business. I'd have to sit down and go into a deep memory cache to recall most of the details but I remember how my spouse and I were thankful we didn't bite the bait when the S&L fecal material hit the fan. We lost our business anyway due to a bad policy that kind of started the ball rolling for the nightmare we live in now but I will never forget how close we came to being involved in that S&L mess... we could easily have become some of the little fish who ended up getting in big trouble.
So where's Niel now? Last I heard he was collecting taxpayer funds by being a secretive lobbyist for some BS that probably has to do with screwing up the entire US public school system or something to that effect... but that was during this brother's regime. I'm sure he's up to something equally as evil and ugly nowadays... and we're probably picking up the tab, as usual.
Never, ever let these bastards back in office, they are dangerous enough outside of it.
I also recommend that some form of fighting back, not necessarily in the streets where they can inflict bodily harm but at their own game. Not sure where to start or how to recruit support but if OWS was able to make them sweat, I can imagine that something more advanced could formulate as well.
One can hope for such change.
Carry on Octafish, your info dumps are great. Even if I don't always comment, I almost always read what you put out here for us to read.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)Bypassing the media. Creating pamphlets and fliers and papering everywhere. It's an honorable patriotic tradition in America, dating back to the Revolution.
I'm reminded what happened to citizens of Soviet Union when the govt banned copying machines. They got out the old carbon paper and typed away. Anything to spread truth to power.
pa28
(6,145 posts)Goldman, The Carlyle Group and Stratfor believe the government is now set up for their benefit and profit. Unfortunately for the rest of us good little taxpayers that is mostly correct.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)By Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent
9:08PM GMT 28 Feb 2012
The Telegraph
A senior executive with the private intelligence firm Stratfor boasted to colleagues about his "trusted former CIA cronies" and promised to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation, according to emails released by the WikiLeaks.
Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Texas firm, also informed members of staff that he had a copy of the confidential indictment on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
The second batch of five million internal Stratfor emails obtained by the Anonymous computer hacking group revealed that the company has high level sources within the United States and other governments, runs a network of paid informants that includes embassy staff and journalists and planned a hedge fund, Stratcap, based on its secret intelligence.
SNIP...
Mr Assange labelled the company as a "private intelligence Enron", in reference to the energy giant that collapsed after a false accounting scandal.
CONTINUED...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9111784/Stratfor-executive-boasted-of-trusted-former-CIA-cronies.html
Absolutely, pa28. Thank goodness for Wikileaks and the brave whistleblowers who are rotting in jail or worse. As long as there are two of us, Democracy still has a good chance.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)By Greg Palast
Reader Supported News, September 16, 2013
Joseph Stiglitz couldn't believe his ears. Here they were in the White House, with President Bill Clinton asking the chiefs of the US Treasury for guidance on the life and death of America's economy, when the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers turns to his boss, Secretary Robert Rubin, and says, "What would Goldman think of that?"
Huh?
Then, at another meeting, Summers said it again: What would Goldman think?
A shocked Stiglitz, then Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, told me he'd turned to Summers, and asked if Summers thought it appropriate to decide US economic policy based on "what Goldman thought." As opposed to say, the facts, or say, the needs of the American public, you know, all that stuff that we heard in Cabinet meetings on The West Wing.
Summers looked at Stiglitz like Stiglitz was some kind of naive fool who'd read too many civics books.
CONTINUED...
http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-goldman-sacked/
Thank you for grokking, Ichingcarpenter. Welcome back from Wherever...the place wasn't the same.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Can't afford to get fixed or buy a new or used one.
My daughter loaned me her iPad till next week, it's hard to link stuff or respond like I use to, takes me 4 times or more longer
Maybe something will turn up, I need a Mac cause of all the data I had on my hard drive over the years which is still good because of back up
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)Summers has some interesting connections.
Grandchild of jewish immigrants on both sides of the family. Father & mother both profs at the U of Penn. One in economics, one in public policy.
The economist Paul Samuelson (Neo-Keynesian school, Neo-classical synthesis, dominates economic policy to the present day) is his paternal uncle and the economist Kenneth Arrow (neoclassical school) is his maternal uncle.
Geithner's family's numerous connections to the Ford interests are also of note, including this:
During the early 1980s, Geithner's father oversaw the Ford Foundation's microfinance programs in Indonesia being developed by Ann Dunham Soetoro, President Barack Obama's mother, and they met at least once.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Larry Summers and the 'End-Game' Memo
http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo/
After Palast, more on Summers from Little Sister:
http://blog.littlesis.org/2011/01/10/evidence-of-an-american-plutocracy-the-larry-summers-story/
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)Why haven't they pressured the Justice Dept to prosecute them? Ahhh...we don't want to believe it but no matter how many education proposals or begging for minimum wage hikes these guys are still part of the crimes which are weighted much heavier than education fluff or taxes fluff such as Stratfor or TPP. I really am dismayed at how gullible, foolish and blind our party has become.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The Democratic leadership thinks they're better than everybody else.
A maths problem, for those inclined to monetize or count votes.
Certainly, September 11 made simple the transformation of limousine liberals into what Glen Ford calls "cruise missile liberals."
Stratfor Emails: Pentagon-Hired Mercenaries Intervening in Syria Since December
John Glaser
AntiWar.com, April 02, 2012
Via Jeremy Scahill, this news from Alakhbar English (Lebanese paper) on the WikiLeaks Stratfor emails:
US government officials requested that an American private security firm contact Syrian opposition figures in Turkey to see how they can help in regime change, the CEO of one of these firms told Stratfor in a company email obtained by WikiLeaks and Al-Akhbar.
James F. Smith, former director of Blackwater, is currently the Chief Executive of SCG International, a private security firm with experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In what appears to be his first email to Stratfor, Smith stated that his background is CIA and his company is comprised of former DOD [Department of Defense], CIA and former law enforcement personnel.
We provide services for those same groups in the form of training, security and information collection, he explained to Stratfor. (doc-id5441475)
In a 13 December 2011 email to Stratfors VP for counter-terrorism Fred Burton, which Burton shared with Stratfors briefers, Smith claimed that [he] and Walid Phares were getting air cover from Congresswoman [Sue] Myrick to engage Syrian opposition in Turkey (non-MB and non-Qatari) on a fact finding mission for Congress.
James Smith told Scahill hes been operating in both Syria & Libya the past year but that Stratfors internal description of his work was inaccurate.' The December date of the emails coincides with previous Stratfor revelations about covert operations inside Syria.
SOURCE w/links to details: http://antiwar.com/blog/2012/04/02/stratfor-emails-pentagon-hired-mercenaries-intervening-in-syria-since-december/
FWIU, the US Government made even LOOKING at these files illegal for its imployees. And they better keep their wugs shut it they want to collect a penny in pension.
starroute
(12,977 posts)Anonymous was able to obtain the documents but then didn't know what to do with them. Wikileaks has been releasing things selectively on its own timetable. But Brown set up Project PM to analyze everything and trace out the connections in the military-industrial-intelligence-financial complex.
Brown says he never actually looked inside that one Stratfor file that he copy-pasted a link to. The feds claim it contained credit card information -- and even though they backed off from actually prosecuting Brown for sharing the link, they managed to use it to add a year to his sentence and to up the nearly a million dollars in restitution they bizarrely expect him to pay. But it does make you wonder what was really inside it for them to freak out that way.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)By: Peter Van Buren
FireDogLake.com, Friday January 23, 2015
This THIS LINK could have sent me to jail. Another link came very, very close to sending Barrett Brown to jail. Brown was just sentenced to five years in jail on other charges that the government could make stick, in another step towards the criminalization of everything.
The United States v. Barrett Brown
Brown, 33-years-old, was arrested in 2012 after his and his mothers homes were raided and he used threatening language toward FBI officers in a response posted to YouTube. He was subsequently accused of working with hackers, whose efforts yielded a huge tranche of embarrassing and revealing information concerning misbehavior and sleaze at U.S. government contractors, primarily Stratfor.
Among the secrets exposed were collaborative efforts between the government and private contractors to monitor social networks, and to develop online surveillance systems.
SNIP...
There may be other such link cases out there that we do not yet know of. They may be classified, or the parties involved may be under gag orders, as was Brown.
Whos Next?
There appears little question that the government is testing the concept, looking for a case that it can win that would criminalize linking. From the governments point of view, the win would pay off handsomely:
With use of their content criminalized, sites like Wikileaks would slip beneath the world radar. People would be increasingly afraid of reading them, and the crowdsourcing critical to sifting through millions of documents would slow down significantly.
In cases the government saw as particularly dangerous, people would disappear into jail. With a precedent set in a good test case, winning such prosecutions would be rote work for interns. Is there a link? Did Ms. X create the link? Does the link go to classified information? Its a slam dunk.
Best of all from a control standpoint, prosecuting links will have a chilling affect. Many people will simply be afraid to take the chance of legal trouble and stop creating links or following them. That will certainly be the case among the main stream media, already far too skittish about security matters. One wonders what effect such prosecuting of links will have on search engines like Google, essentially little more than a collection of links.
Another step toward a post-Constitutionalization of America is the creeping criminalization of everything. If every act is potentially cause for prosecution, the ability of the government to control what people do or say grows.
CONTINUED w/links...
http://firedoglake.com/2015/01/23/barrett-brown-went-to-jail-for-my-sins/
Thank you for summing up the situation, starroute. You're one of the reasons why DU matters and why Democracy really does stand a chance.
Whatever it is behind the Catch-22, where if one merely sees what's back there makes one an enemy of the state, must be something that represents an existential threat to the Secret Team upon discovery. Seeing how little they care for little people or democracy, it must be a threat at the heart of the Secret State. That means they are running scared of their own Team from finding out they're being used, like the mopes at ENRON buying shares up until the day Kenny Boy got escorted out of the building. The one guy the clean government types were counting on was Cliff Baxter and his passing became a message to the rest to keep their wugs shut. It's like a pattern.
starroute
(12,977 posts)I mean, nothing that does come out seems to make any difference. They just grin and say, "So we're spying on Americans. Big deal. And we torture people. Why not? You got any objections?" And the American people roll over in bed and go back to sleep.
If there is something hidden, it's hidden very, very deeply. I had a look at Brown's Project PM wiki at one point -- and there were no blinding revelations. A lot of jabber from the HBGary emails. Names of government contractors and a few codenames for projects. But nothing to indicate what they were really up to, except for spying on everybody and creating false online personas. Cointelpro stuff for the computer era.
But then, I've never had a clue as to who the "they" are. Up until the 1950s, it's simple. There are the heirs of the old robber barons -- the Rockefellers and DuPonts and such -- who are transparently dedicated to maintaining their own power. But then it all sort of fades into the military-industrial complex -- faceless corporations run by people you never heard of.
So who's really running the show? Who benefits and who stands to lose if it's blown wide open? I don't have a clue, and it looks very much as though the system has taken on its own momentum and turned into a self-perpetuating juggernaut that rewards those who support it and punishes those who threaten it, without anybody's hand being on the tiller.
But who the hell knows?
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)get what they want, or crush anyone who threatens their profits is laughable.
It's why I am confident that the breakup of Occupy WS was coordinated by the banks. OWS was gaining traction and had to be stopped before they found a way to break through the silence of the puppet media.
Duppers
(28,125 posts)malaise
(269,038 posts)investment banking?
Frightening indeed.
Thanks Octafish - another great catch.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Greed unbridled. Greed beyond what mere working Americans can fathom. And they answer to no one. Every watchdog group has been systematically dismantled, including TV and print journalism.
malaise
(269,038 posts)Mussolini would be jealous of this corporatist model.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)It should!
zeemike
(18,998 posts)for keeping us informed about the gross scam we are being subjected to by the power elite and our own government.
It is quite a scheme when they use our own government that we pay for to help them gain money and power...and none dare call it Fascism.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)Isn't this hard evidence of a conspiracy to do massive insider trading? Where are the indictments?
Duppers
(28,125 posts)K&R
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)discrediting journalists, bloggers, and anyone who was doing their job of informing the American people about Big Bank corruption, the massive crimes committed by them.
It was in that 'dump' that we found out that even bloggers Like Glenn Greenwald (as he was at the time) was a target of these 'security contractors'.
They were hugely embarrassed, and it seems they wanted revenge.
What happened to the LEFT? We should be fighting for the release of this blogger but it appears the LEFT went missing after Bush left office.
Trillo
(9,154 posts)"Revolving door" with government, and all.
Ramses
(721 posts)Eye-fucking opening blatant criminality.